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One problem though, is that sometimes when I open any application, it appears as a black screen, only the window title is available. This could be anything - control center, the start menu, firefox - anything!

Before, if maximized it would come blank and after a few minutes, sometimes longer, I could see everything. Now even if its not fully maximized its black / blank.

Does anyone know why this happens? I don't think its anything to do with my graphics card because it 'eventually' becomes okay most of the time. Could it be to do with Compiz settings? I put it on Custom first, then changed it to Advanced.

Another problem I have which is probably unrelated, is that the x server randomly restarts itself sometimes. This happened when using Kubuntu 9.04 too. Just suddenly restarts, and seconds later the login screen is there again.

Any help given would be appreciated. I'm a newbie, so if you need any outputs of commands posted, let me know. Thanks in advance!

I would guess that you do not have the correct video driver loaded and are not able to render stuff using glx and 3d stuff from Compiz. What video card (lspci) do you have? If it is an ATI or nVidia did you load their proper drivers? (Menu, Control Center, Hardware, Hardware Drivers)